As Email Wheezes Toward The Grave, We Contemplate A DNR

[Commentary] It sounds kind of crazy (or crazy awesome)--a company banning email for all its employees. But this is no item from News of the Weird. Far from it. The company that banned email is Europe's largest IT company, one with 75,000 employees and $13 billion in annual revenue, which operates in 13 countries. The company, Atos, is the official IT shop for the Olympic games. Atos CEO Thierry Breton explained that "email is no longer the appropriate communication tool," and that the "zero email" policy would be phased in over the next 18 months. Breton says he hasn't sent an email in the past three years, and that Facebook, text, and the phone will replace email for his company, as they prepare for a new wave of usage and behavior.

By 2014, the technology research group Gartner predicts social networking services will replace email as the principal method of interpersonal communications for 20% of business users. So, is email dead? Can we do something to change it? And should we?